commoditised

One rule is to ditch businesses that are about to become commoditised and no longer yield a sufficient profit margin.

Investment banking is an intensely competitive and increasingly commoditised business and banks look for people who will give them an edge.

"For computing to reach a higher level" , he says, "its cells had to be commoditised. "

Again there is talk of news being commoditised and of the need to focus on analysis and opinion, or on a narrow subject area.

Global handset makers have followed Apple's lead in creating revenues from services as handsets become increasingly commoditised.

The services business is becoming commoditised, as hardware did before it, and IBM knows it must add intellectual property to its offerings.

Big companies are looking to shed more commoditised areas, say bankers, and instead focus on higher-tech components and areas of growth.

The rest has been commoditised, chunks of concrete communism distributed for capitalist gain.

As network gear becomes commoditised, services offer higher margins and long contracts, notes Mr Thelander.

So unless application delivery can be speeded up beyond traditional limits, markets become commoditised before they can be reached.

Many Chinese businesses have been built on using cheap labour to produce cheap, commoditised goods such as clothes and shoes for export.

Personal computers are, let's face it, pretty commoditised affairs.

"The technology breakthrough they came to market with has been commoditised, " says Mr Phillips.

"The PC business is a commoditised business where scale is very important, " de Lencquesaing said.

In a virtual world they will become even more commoditised, which is bad news for Microsoft.

Cyclical demand means that profits are volatile, and new kinds of chips quickly become commoditised.

The worry is that such countries depend on selling commoditised products of which they may never be the cheapest producers.